414 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
served that the tide, having risen higher than usual, 
had washed out to sea a large pair of double 
canoes, which he had left on the beach. At first 
he thought of taking a smaller canoe, fetching 
back the larger ones, and fixing them in a place of 
security; but while he was deliberating, it occurred 
to his recollection that it was the Sabbath, and 
that the scriptures prohibited any work. He 
therefore allowed the canoes to drift towards the 
reef, until they were broken on the rocks. But, 
he added, though he did not work on the Sabbath, 
his mind was troubled on account of the loss he 
had sustained, and that he thought was wrong. 
He was immediately told that he would have done 
right, had he fetched the canoes to the shore on 
the Sabbath. When, however, it was considered, 
that perhaps this pair of canoes had cost him 
nearly twelve months’ labour, and that, before 
they were lost, he was comparatively richer than 
many an English merchant is in the possession of 
a five or six hundred ton vessel, it appears a re¬ 
markable instance of conscientious regard for the 
Sabbath-day. 
Since the abolition of idolatry, no part of the 
conduct of the South Sea Islanders has impressed 
the minds of foreign visitants more forcibly than 
their attention to the observance of the Sabbath. 
I never saw any, even the most irreligious, or 
those unfriendly to Missions, who were not con¬ 
strained to confess that it surpassed all they had 
heard or imagined could have been exhibited; 
while others, more favourably disposed, have pub¬ 
licly declared its effect on their own minds. 
When Mr. Crook arrived in 1816, the ship 
reaching Tahiti on the Sabbath, no canoe put off, 
no native was seen on the beach, no smoke in any 
